ATLANTA — When the No. 5 seed Michigan men’s basketball team was up nine points on No. 1 overall seed Auburn, everything was in front of it: revenge on Michigan State, a Final Four berth and a chance at winning it all. It felt possible.
For a while it felt possible. Then it felt familiar.
The 2024-25 Wolverines’ fatal flaw — one that won’t completely overshadow their success — was their inability to put teams away. Because of it, Michigan suffered the finality of a loss in March.
What Friday night should show May is that inability to put teams away is what separates him from a national championship.
“I did think we had a chance to play in the last weekend,” Wolverines coach Dusty May said.
After a wildly successful first year, that’s where expectations should be set for the epoch of Dusty May in Ann Arbor. He won the Big Ten Tournament, was lauded a “future Hall of Famer” by his second-round adversary and earned himself a lush contract extension.
But coaches will always be judged on their ability to build and improve. The unfortunate part of May doing more in year one than most expected, is that he now has a high bar to clear in year two.
As difficult as replacing graduate center Vlad Goldin and likely junior forward Danny Wolf will be, that’ll be the expectation given how quickly May constructed this year’s roster. The judgement will come on whether May succeeds 10, 11, 12 months from now.
“We want to win championships,” May said. “So now we turn focus to year two and try to build a championship roster and correct some things that we need to get better at, and then just see where we end up a year from now.”
Not being able to close out second-half leads cost the Wolverines less than it should, just the loss at Minnesota and the season-ending one to the Tigers come readily to mind. But losses to Oklahoma and Arkansas earlier in the year stained Michigan’s nonconference slate.
But for as much as resilience, determination or other coach speak can be accredited as the reason behind Michigan’s knack for winning close games, May can’t count on that year in and year out.
The Wolverines shouldn’t have needed a hero as often as they did. They were up double-digits in the second half against Maryland in the conference tournament, then again against UC San Diego in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Both required junior guard Tre Donaldson to hit a clutch shot in a down-to-the-wire game.
Playing in that many close games likely won’t yield equal success next year. And Auburn proved that it definitely won’t equate to more.
Against a team of the Tigers’ caliber — a true national title contender — you can’t let up. As much as going up by nine points proves Michigan could play with anyone in the country, the way the Wolverines let Auburn come back reflected their own status, a tier below the Tigers.
Everything that happened in May’s first year suggests he is on track to put Michigan in that upper echelon. Sitting atop the Big Ten throughout much of the regular season, winning the conference tournament and being up by nine points over the top team in the country proved, if it wasn’t abundantly clear that May was a home-run hire.
He constructed a highly talented roster primarily through the transfer portal. And knowing he needed something to set the Wolverines apart, he designed a unique offense around two 7-footers. Then he won a lot of games across the regular season, Big Ten Tournament and NCAA Tournament.
Though that ultimately makes a Sweet Sixteen loss sting all the more, it signifies how close May is. It shows there should be no doubt, May can bring a national championship to Ann Arbor. That is, if he can learn to put teams away.
